How our QBRNinjas are transforming marketing QBRs

QBR seasons are pretty exciting times for everyone in marketing especially for analytics nerds like us. Everyone is talking data and working on discovering the insights for their storyline around the results and health of the business. This is the time in the quarter when marketing teams get the opportunity to demonstrate the impact they have made on the business. Above all, this is the time to celebrate the wins, respect the lessons learned and rally the teams around the exciting new initiatives towards achieving new business goals.

Yet another marketing QBR season is upon us. Marketing analytics and data related conversations are in the air. Runs and re-runs of reports are being done, numbers being validated, presentations are being made. Marketing leaders are eagerly waiting to get their hands on the data to start putting together the story, insights, and plans for the next quarter.

With these thoughts on my mind, I recently posted on LinkedIn about what the QBR season is like for our customers and how we are helping our so-called #QBRNinjas with “the art of QBR”. I mentioned about

The key business questions that our QBRNinjas like to answer in their QBRs and what metrics, data points they rely on to discover the insights and put together their storylines.

Last week, I was helping one of our customers prepare for their QBR. While working on reviewing health of the funnel, it stuck to me that most of the marketers must be in the same mode right now – reviewing the performance and getting ready for the QBRs. At the same time, I also realized that, there must be many more marketers that are just scrambling to get access to the right data, trying to validate the data instead of spending the much needed time to understand the results and objectively analyze the performance. Given the strategic importance of the QBRs, many times I see that marketing teams do not have a well-defined approach for managing the QBR process especially getting timely access to the data so that they can evaluate the performance and more importantly have their marketing analytics teams help with the deep dives around key areas that deserve attention. Most of the times, this wait ends up being either too long or leads to wrong data.

Data and analytics are at the core of modern marketing. Whether it is the marketing team at a small start-up or an enterprise-level organization, every marketer needs access to performance data that is standardized and available real-time via self-serve dashboards.

Above all, she should have the confidence that the data her marketing analytics team provides accurately represents the health of the business and results of all the hard-work that she has been putting in.

She is expected to objectively analyze the performance, demonstrate the quantifiable impact her work is making towards driving the top line of the business. At marqeu, with our marketing analytics practice, we are focused on enabling marketers to get real-time access to performance data via self serve dashboards so that they can discover the insights to drive incredibly personalized customer experience and accelerate the revenue growth for their organizations.

Usually, about 80 % of the time is wasted in organizing data, building reports that don’t answer business questions, leaving any time for discovering insights. As I write this post, many marketers are living through this scenario and feeling helpless.

We are working on flipping this equation for our customers and QBRNinjas to get the data and reports ready in less than 20% of the time and have most of the time for discovering insights. This has been the biggest impact of our work and we could not be more proud!

Every organization has different sets of metrics that they use to evaluate the health of the business. Across all our customers, 3 sets of questions our QBRNinjas usually have:

a) Did we meet our goals both for volume and conversions?

We have been using demand waterfall performance to help answer this question. With our marketing analytics frameworks, we enable real-time visibility into the health of the funnel so that marketing teams can track inquiries, mqls, sqls, sals and wins across different sales segments, product lines, by different channels, tactics, and campaigns. Cohort based funnel conversions are a key part of evaluating the health of the funnel so as to get a good read into the quality of the leads flowing into the funnel and discover what kinds of leads are moving faster through the funnel, what the velocity looks like. Demand Waterfall conversions generally track 4 KPIs with some degrees of variation – Leads to MQLs, MQLs to SQLs, SQLs to SALs and SALs to Deals. These 4 KPIs provide insights into efficiency across the funnel and help with accelerating deals.

b) How much did we invest and what is the pipeline impact?

Across all marketing organizations (irrespective of the size, industry), the conversation now is moving more towards marketing ROI. Finance and sales organizations expect marketing leaders to make smart decisions when it comes to budget allocation and more importantly within the marketing organizations, the leaders increasingly want to feel confident about these decisions because it is these decisions that will help them meet their pipeline goals. This is where multi-touch campaign attribution comes into play and it is the most valuable of all the KPIs as it powers the marketing investment decision making which in turn drives the results for the marketing organization. Whether it is the First Touch, Last Touch, Multi-Touch, Equal Weight Multi-Touch or Weighted approach to marketing attribution, when implemented correctly and validated, the insights provided are of immense value for the marketing organization. These KPIs provide strategic insights to the marketing leaders and CMOs so that they can confidently demonstrate the impact that their organizations are making and help foster a strong working relationship for marketing within the c-suite, especially with the CFOs.

c) What is working in terms of driving the pipeline?

Driving new pipeline has always been the most important KPI for any marketing organization. The importance of demonstrating how marketing is impacting the pipeline has grown manifolds in the recent times. The 2 commonly used metrics that demonstrate the impact of marketing are Marketing Pipeline Acceleration/Influence and New Pipeline Sourcing. With these 2 metrics, organizations can quantify marketing-driven engagement across the accounts and relate them to the impact on pipeline. These pipeline correlations of the marketing activities provide valuable insights when it comes to understanding “when” the new opportunities were created in marketing engaged accounts and for the accounts with existing opportunities, how marketing was able to influence deal expansions and accelerate deal closures. These 2 KPIs provide a foundation for marketing leaders have impactful conversations with their sales counterparts. At the same time, these KPIs are very influential when it comes to evaluating the market mix across marketing tactics and channels in different phases of the buying cycle.

We are always on the lookout for inputs and examples from the marketing and sales communities to keep adding value for our customers. We would welcome the inputs from other leaders and practitioners around what kind of questions are being asked by sales and marketing teams during the QBRs at your organizations and how you go about answering them.